How 'Fancy' Became Trendy

0:10Hello and thanks for tuning in to Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food and beverage. I'm Mike Schneider, a.k.a. BevNetMike, and I'm with my co-hosts for this episode, John Craven and Jackie Brugliera. Yeah, Ray bailed on this week's episode, but he left like half a script and a bottle of stale Gatorade for us for hydration. Well, he said it's stale. I don't know. Do beverages go stale? That's not what we call it. Gatorade? Probably not. I mean, he probably spit in it and left it, and now it's fermenting. Oh, no wonder it tastes so good. Well, he's off in Spain, probably drowning in some, I don't know, Red wine and having the meat sweats.

0:45Meat sweats. All the tapas. Yeah. Jelly. Speaking of travel, John Craven loves the Guinness as long as it's poured in Ireland. Otherwise, he thinks it's straight shite. True or false? God, that's like, I can't answer this question where I'm not going to offend someone, right? Guinness is good. Come on. Even people from Ireland admit that the Guinness is just better in Ireland. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't think it was like the liquid was better. It's just better to be in Ireland drinking a Guinness. Yeah, it's just the experience. Yeah. But, yeah, I had a few. And you went to the Guinness factory, right?

1:21Yeah, that was a little overwhelming or maybe underwhelming. Underwhelming. Yeah, it was kind of like a museum. I mean, I don't know. You know, it's a Diageo product. You go on the tour, right? And then they give you some Guinness. We didn't do the tour. We just ate there and, like, walked around, had some beers. My daughter went there. She had, like, half of the tiny cup they give you. she's like oh at least i tried guinness uh i didn't get a little tiny taster i don't know we did it wrong we did it wrong i did it all wrong jackie takes a bucket i mean you know i had my two kids with me and my wife obviously but we have to learn how to do it the right way do what yeah go to the guinness factory i mean you miss the tasting experience which for you as a beverage tasting pro probably isn't that cool but they give you these little tiny guinnesses and they walk you through the romas and all the different components of the beer yeah no i i that's kind of what i was getting at though is the uh my kids in particular who uh have grown up going to way too many breweries and other uh cpg related things uh we're not just not having it they're like not again yeah basically they're like what is this we also had an upcoming cpg related things feast in the upcoming summer fancy food show which we just got back from yesterday, John and I did a one day sprint of the summer fancy food show, which was great.

2:43John, let's talk a little bit about the fancy food show. Yeah. Always. Uh, I don't know, one of my favorite shows, sort of the last one before summer kind of really starts and yeah, pretty good energy there. We were there Monday and, you know, I feel like there were more people into it just with the lack of, uh, expo East this year, which, you know, side note kind of wish this one would maybe move into like September and take the place of that. But, you know, we need a solid East Coast show and New York's certainly the place to be for that. But yeah, lots of great brands there. I mean, walking around with Mike, I think we tried basically every hot sauce known to man.

3:25It was pretty funny. The, uh, gosh, which one was that? Yeah. See, they're like describing one of them as actually spicy. And, you know, they're from Taiwan. I'm kind of like thinking their level of what spicy is not going to be compatible with me. So I tapped out on the mild after that. And Mike went for the spicy, did not have a lot. And he was he was dying. So they had five hot sauces and they had them in progression. Jack, you would have loved this. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I'm so jealous. It was a flight of hot sauce. They gave it to you on a cracker, started with their pineapple miso, which is incredible.

4:04Then there was a smoked variety. And then you moved into this, there was a mango skew that just, it was so unique. It was like nothing I'd tasted before. And I think that was probably my favorite. It didn't have as much heat, but I just want to taste that all the time. It was really good. And then, you know, it progressed from there and then get to ghost pepper. And I was looking at the heat ratings and the heat rating was four. Okay. So I'm like, yeah, I can handle this. And as John said, I was straight nuked standing there trying to have a conversation, turning red and just like, ah, and it was one of those Jackie where the flavor's amazing and the volume just keeps turning up.

4:46Building and building. And they're standing there and building and building. And they ended up getting me eight more crackers. Oh my goodness. And I ate them all. It's probably entertaining for them to like watch people go through the experience, you know? I think they were slightly amused. So they were psyched that we liked their product. Yeah, Jane was definitely amused. Yeah, that mango one was superb. I think she was also a bit horrified. I was telling John also that four is in Chinese, the word is sluh, which also means death. So I think that's why they rated it four. Just death sauce. Death for Mike, at least.

5:20It's a really good flavor. the heat was just there's a lot one of the things that was interesting about the show was that south asian brands were there in force and organized they had a party and i felt like there was just a lot of energy from those founders at the show getting a lot of attention they all brought really great products uh john's eating one right now what am i eating or you just ate it actually just finished it uh we're digesting it right now oh yeah this this little tub of delicious stuff we saw rajas and porva and i got a hug from aji herself that was awesome it's great to be able to hang out with the founders and then just hear how they describe their brands to people and to look at and to watch the reactions everybody seems to really be enjoying the ajis experience definitely we caught up with eliza from people people as well i also got nuked by there goes pepper sauce.

6:17So amazing. Yeah. I saw their new packaging and it looks really, really nice. Very clean. Yeah. No, there's a parrot on the front now. They've changed the name so that you can tell exactly what you're getting from the product. There's still a good cultural nod in there as well too. So we were talking about this in the beginning, as you recall, Jackie, we talked about, oh, you know, how do you make this more accessible for people? and without, you know, selling out, to be frank. And I think they did a good job of that too. The design is based on the trucks in Pakistan, which I don't know if you two know, I didn't know that much about this, but they paint them.

6:56And so when you're in traffic, there's this beautiful artwork that's like distracting you. That's cool. We of course caught up with Karthik from Dusra and Sahithia from Chutney Punch, Monica from the Chai Box. I mean, again, there was just a really cool, critical mass of South Asian founders there. And we also caught up with Sajani from Cola Goodies, which we have in front of us here. Cola Goodies, a brand of Sri Lankan milk teas. So we have the traditional Sri Lankan milk tea latte here. And also the masala chai lattes, which is what you have in your cup there, John. These come in a box and you open the box and there's this pack inside which has a powder in it that you steep and then you strain and you can drink.

7:47Cheers. I thought this was just an old latte. Nope. It's masala chai. So does it already have like powdered milk or something in there? Yeah, this has the milk in it already so you don't have to steam milk or figure any of that part out. It's, you know, it's the perfect balance on the side. This is all goodies, no baddies, just fresh AF whole ingredients. I love that. Goodies, no baddies. Super cute and tasty. What do you think? Yeah, pretty solid. I'm not a huge chai drinker, but this stuff's definitely tasty. Definitely tasty. And you're opening up some snoods, is that? I'm just having a little snack over here.

8:26Just trying to discreetly open a bag of snoods. These things are really delicious. I mean, basically a chip that's pasta, right? Yeah. This one's a rigatoni, basil, pomodoro. What was the like ramen-like flavor that they had? It was like a miso. Oh, miso ramen, yeah. Oh, it was actually called miso ramen, right? Yeah, that was really, really tasty, very spicy. We caught up with the founder, Lauren Bodden, at the show yesterday, and she was just telling us a little bit about the experience of snooves and saying, you know, her idea was to bring less popular shapes of pasta into snack form, So there's still a bunch of education there.

9:06But one of the things that surprised her is that the older generation really likes her product as much as the younger generation. I feel like all generations love pasta. But they also love the ramen, the miso. Yeah. This is definitely the right starting point. Rigatoni. Yeah. Who hasn't had rigatoni, right? And it's basically just tomato sauce. And I remember the first time we tried it, I think it was at Expo West. And we went through the flavors and we started with the rigatoni, which is more approachable. And then I think Craven's eyes were like the star emojis, you know? Yeah, he was in love.

9:41We were all in love at that point. Super good. Star emojis. Maybe perhaps less approachable was a beverage from Mona Tea called Foucbois. Foucbois is a beverage for, quote, sexual enhancement. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. But it's spelled F-U-Q-B-O-I. I was like, this is Foucbois. I could see this on Snackshot. It was like, who's had fuck boy? Oh, goodness. But I didn't try it. John, you tried it. Thanks for outing me. Yeah, I was, I guess, forced to try a little taste of it. I don't, you know, I think gingery or something. I don't even remember what the active ingredient was. But yeah, I would strongly advise against that branding.

10:29And to be honest, probably that function too. That's sort of a limited reach product. Especially if you like rooibos tea, because Monatees has a good line of sweetened and unsweetened rooibos teas that are flavored that I thought were, you know, those were, those are really tasty. Yeah. I mean, if you like Roybus tea, then for sure. I mean, I think that's also another one of those products that I think is tried time and time again. And I think is a lot of times, well, always struggled to get beyond being kind of a niche offering of the tea set just due to the education hurdle. You know, it's interesting walking around somewhere like the fancy food show and, you know, some stuff that is trending now were the things that, you know, I don't know, five or maybe even in some cases, 10 years ago were like the, man, there's a massive educational hurdle here.

11:26And, you know, now that hurdle's been cleared or is close to being cleared. You know, I think of that with a lot of the Asian flavors that we're seeing. and you know at the same time there's kind of like a new class of those every single year right we're like the educational hurdle is you know it's like long tail innovation stuff that you know some of it will probably succeed some maybe not but you know and I guess getting that back to the rooibos like some things just seem like they're still waiting for their moment you know not the rooibos isn't like a known thing but it's not right you know it's not like a volume producer are in the tea set, right?

12:06It's not black tea. It's not green tea. Right, right. So, or matcha for that matter. But always, always fun to check this stuff out. Yeah, I think there's still like education around tea in general and like functionality in tea and herbal tea. And I feel like that is growing, though. I feel like in the last couple years, we've seen more and more herbal teas and herbal tea beverages come out. I mean, it's one of the most confusing sort of things in the sense that there's tea and then everything else that's not actually from a tea plant, right? Rooibos, you know, mate, guayusa, like whatever it is.

12:43And I think there's always been just like a marketing and messaging challenge that any brand that goes into those categories faces. So, yeah, I mean, it's very interesting. And obviously tea is like, I don't know what, like the most popular beverage on earth or something. But what if, hear me out here for a second. What if rooibos tea had a non-neach functionality like immunity? Oh, wow. Amuse is the presenting sponsor. I'm like, where's this guy going? For this episode of Taste Radio. Now more than ever, consumers are looking for ways to boost their immune systems, and Amuse gives them that edge.

13:22Amuse is a dietary and food ingredient clinically shown to stimulate immune function at the cellular level. Incorporate Amuse into your innovation strategy and help your consumers optimize their health throughout the year. Learn more at amusehealth.com. That's I-M-M-U-S-E health.com. Thanks for sponsoring Amuse. You know, I'm pretty sure this Aji's Lanza has immunity benefits. I'm sure it does. That's what I'm telling myself is I just eat a whole tub of it. Anything with nutritional benefit has immunity benefits, right? I mean, that's what I'm saying. I mean, that's just 20 calories of awesome right there.

13:59I mean, probably this little bottle of straightaway Nocino Manhattan has some immunity benefits, right? So obviously not going to sample this right now since it's still morning here. But I sampled it the other day. This is from straightaways. What do they call it? Sipper Club, I think. So they've got a Nocino, which Nocino is like a walnut liqueur. Manhattan. Super tasty if you're into Manhattans. And then a breakfast martini, which I don't know about this. I don't know about the suggestion of martinis for breakfast, but... Curious what's in it. Yeah. So why they called it a breakfast martini is it has orange marmalade in it, which you totally wouldn't pick up on, but it's basically like it's got orange, the core, dry vermouth, lemon juice, gin, of course.

14:50But it's kind of like a citrusy martini with this nice little kind of extra orange note at the end. Well, if you drink that at breakfast and you have enough of it, it's a different kind of immunity that you feel like you have. Yeah. Invincibility. But I mean... I'm going to stick with my Cola Goodies masala chai latte. Either way, last thing I'll say about Straight Away, my favorite email to get is when Cy Kane, who's the founder, CEO of Straight Away, sends an email with, hey, I've got some new stuff. Oh, yeah. I feel like that's been a lot more regularly lately. straightaway has been coming out with nonstop new innovative.

15:25Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, they're following a model that we're seeing a growing number of companies try, which is sort of having this like subscription club for like the most engaged, like hardcore consumers where they're able to try out new ideas, both, you know, just to put stuff out with an audience that's going to buy it, but also, you know, to get some feedback on things that maybe would turn into more mass-produced products later. So yeah, I believe we saw that with like Hoplark too, right? Yeah. Hoplark's doing it. There's a couple of other ones. But I think that's a fun experience too for consumers.

16:00You know, you feel like you have the in on what's coming next and you can give feedback. Yeah, totally. I mean, for a company like straight away, it's like, if you like cocktails, like having some cool new stuff show up. And so far they've all been top-notch products. It's kind of fun to give that a try. And, you know, they're in a 750 ml bottle, good sharing format. Jackie, speaking of fun new things to try, we definitely missed you yesterday. And we talked about you a little bit. You're probably your, my grandma would say your nose was itching. But we met Laura Dadoop, the founder of not Roblo, but Joblo.

16:40Joblo. Joblo Hot Sauce. Oh, yes. So good. I had that in the office a couple weeks ago, and it's very, very tasty. I told her it's all gone. Yeah, it is. Stuff goes so fast. So hopefully some more will arrive. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more. what do you have on your table over there jackie today so this is actually funny so when i went back to visit my family my mom has been dabbling in cannabis and she had you know the can roadies which are little packets and these are very similar so this is the whims yeah we just got that too yeah pocket tonics and it is a little social mixer this one has four milligrams of cbd and four milligrams of THC.

17:39And this one's lemon basil. So just like open this up. You have this little, it almost looks like a little ketchup packet, but you break it and then it just goes into any beverage that you choose. Oh, cool. Choose your own adventure. Exactly. So my mom has like a new soda stream type thing and then she just puts those in. Nice. But it's kind of like the TikTok water talk trend. You can add this, you know, to anything that you want. Gotcha. those little packets are uh those are kind of sneaky i feel like you know it's like when mike's not looking i'm just gonna put like four of those in his coffee here i go how many days your mom like to have does she do a half of one or she do a full one or is she into two yeah for the can one the roadie one's pretty small yeah it's 2.5 yeah it's not a lot yeah that's like my sweet spot 2.5 you know gotcha something that you could potentially mix it with is i have these parentheses beverages.

18:35They're kind of like tonics. Non-alk, right? Yeah, non-alk tonics. Yeah, they're in spirits bottles. Yeah, so this one's before, this one's after. I would say they could do a little bit better of communicating on the package what exactly it is. It looks like whiskey from here. Could be vinegar. I thought it was scotch. It could be really anything, but when you read more into it, they are caffeine-free, non-alk tonics. And this one is supposed to open your appetite and you're supposed to drink it before dinner and then this one's supposed to like help you with digestion but also the flavor profile is supposed to mimic like a cocktail which you can either mix or drink over ice amazing so interesting functions are we going to try what's in this mystery box over here yeah we're going to try what's in this mystery box yeah last but not least today you asked for it you got it lexington bakes now comes in bite size yeah we've got cosmic forest cookie we've got fleur de sel brownie we've also got i know we've got hazelnut and chocolate chip number five cookie okay well first of all are they calling these bite size or are you because this is i know it's bigger than a bite if you took this in one bite it's not bite size but it's at least single serving this is like i'd call this like uh what were those were they two bite brownies those one of the round ones hub right like this is like four bite brownie yeah four bite brownie it's a really nice little form factor here though for for lexington bakes you could see this just being something you grab at the checkout on the way out of erwan or whatever but they're so cute they're super cute i'm gonna try i've got the hazelnut gn duja yeah it just makes a lot of sense i personally would have to break it up into multiple pieces and come back to it because it is so rich and decadent yeah this is going to take me days to eat no it'll take five minutes how many servings is this labeled for let's say four two two half of brownies are serving 140 calories so yeah i would say if you eat the full thing 300 calories that's like a pretty good sweet spot for people usually i think so super tasty yeah i like this i like the little um white box that he's got going on that's sort of a yeah nice homage to the uh his original sort of fancy gift box nicely optimized for retail display he'll rip in uh a little stand sort of thing yeah it's perfect for checkout that's a cute little stand QR code that I haven't scanned yet.

21:14Real good ingredients, fair trade, non-GMO. You know, things you want in a brownie. So good. Thanks for sending it to us, Lex. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNetCom.inc. BevNetCom.inc? Yeah, that's what we say. I like that. I think I forgot the dot com. I said dot com. No, you just said com. BevNetCom. I did? BevNetCom.inc? Okay. Don't we have a pre-recorded one of those? Probably. It can be in Ray's voice. Who cares? Take it away, Ray. That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening.

21:52Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt. And our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smirlinski. And our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is BevNetTasteRadio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at tasteradio.com.

22:32On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you.